Microsoft offers free Windows Phone 7 to Geohot

Microsoft continues its surprisingly sensible approach to Windows Phone 7 hacking, offering notorious Sony and Apple hacker George “Geohot” Hotz a free WP7 handset. Hotz had expressed his disillusion with Sony after the company sued him for his work hacking the PS3’s copy protection, and suggested that he might look instead to Windows Phone 7; Microsoft “entrepreneur on loan” Brandon Watson promptly tweeted him with the offer of a free phone to “let dev creativity flourish.”

“#geohot if you want to build cool stuff on #wp7, send me email and the team will give you a phone – let dev creativity flourish #wp7dev” Brandon Watson

According to Watson’s Twitter profile, he is working with Microsoft to help the company restore its “developer mojo”; it’s not clear whether Hotz took the exec up on his offer. Microsoft recently met with the ChevronWP7 team responsible for the Windows Phone 7 unlocking tool which turned regular handsets into developer-friendly models, in an attempt to embrace the homebrew community rather than fight against it.